NAME

rmdir — remove a directory file

LIBRARY

Standard C Library (libc, -lc)

SYNOPSIS

#include <unistd.h>

int
rmdir(const char *path);

DESCRIPTION

rmdir() removes a directory file whose name is given by path. The directory must not have any entries other than ‘.’ and ‘..’.

RETURN VALUES

A 0 is returned if the remove succeeds; otherwise a -1 is returned and an error code is stored in the global location errno.

ERRORS

The named file is removed unless:

[ENOTDIR]

A component of the path is not a directory.

[ENAMETOOLONG]

A component of a pathname exceeded {NAME_MAX} characters, or an entire path name exceeded {PATH_MAX} characters.

[ENOENT]

The named directory does not exist.

[ELOOP]

Too many symbolic links were encountered in translating the pathname.

[ENOTEMPTY]

The named directory contains files other than ‘.’ and ‘..’ in it.

[EACCES]

Search permission is denied for a component of the path prefix, or write permission is denied on the directory containing the link to be removed.

[EPERM]

The directory containing the directory to be removed is marked sticky, and neither the containing directory nor the directory to be removed are owned by the effective user ID.

[EBUSY]

The directory to be removed is the mount point for a mounted file system.

[EIO]

An I/O error occurred while deleting the directory entry or deallocating the inode.

[EROFS]

The directory entry to be removed resides on a read-only file system.

[EFAULT]

path points outside the process's allocated address space.

SEE ALSO

mkdir(2), unlink(2)

STANDARDS

The rmdir() function conforms to IEEE Std 1003.1-1990 (“POSIX.1”).

HISTORY

The rmdir() function call appeared in 4.2BSD.